If you are an electronics engineer or a hobbyist, you certainly know the importance of a breadboard during early prototyping. anyone who has used a breadboard would agree that even though the breadboards make the prototyping easier, they too come with their demerits, such as the connections can get loose over time or the connections may not be reliable or it would be harder to debug or to make changes especially if the project is a bit complex. A year ago we discussed a solution for that - the jumperless breadboard by the maker Kevin Cappuccio. As the name suggests the jumperless breadboard doesn’t need any wires for interconnecting, it uses dedicated analog switching ICs instead. Now, after a year, the jumperless is now its fifth version and is set to launch on CrowdSupply.
The new Jumperless V5 comes with a lot of upgrades. Same as its predecessor it is fully software controllable. The desktop app allows you to assign up to 8 Wokwi projects to separate slots that are polled for changes and automatically updated. The RGB LEDs can be used to display the connections and we can even use the entire breadboard as a display if needed. The Jumperless also features four individually programmable ±8 V power supplies, five voltage/current/resistance measurement channels, four 12-bit DACs, three 12-bit ADCs, and even a rotary encoder. it also includes the probe to select rows without affecting the connections. The Jumperless uses precision voltage divider networks in combination with an ADC to detect and sense the probe. The probe itself is a very simple device with just a button, an LED and a needle for probing. It connects with the mainboard through a TRRRS audio jack making it fairly easy to connect or disconnect the probe as needed. While the Jumperless V5 campaign is yet to be launched you can check out the open-source hardware and firmware on Jumperless Github Repository.
